Bloodstone Giants (Ret p5)

IskatuMesk

Canada969 Posts

March 21 2013 18:17 GMT

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Today I seek to rebuild the Bloodstone Battlecruiser. A legendary royal Anahn flagship from the second generation.

The original Bloodstone Battlecruiser, as shown on the far right, is an eyesore. It saw nearly no screentime in Salvation due to all of the problems it had, and its general abhorrent appearance. This will have to change for Retribution.

I am fortunate. I know a Lithuanian pizza boy who managed to slap me together a base hull for the new Bloodstone Battlecruiser. Here is what we have to work with.

This is the new Bloodstone Battlecruiser base mesh, with a few changes by myself. It is already more complex than the most complex Starcraft 2 melee asset. And nowhere near where it needs to be for one of my projects.

There are several major challenges I have to face when bringing this to fruition.

1.) First of all, the weapons cannot clip through the hull when firing. Sins of a Solar Empire has no moving turrets, no arcs, nothing. It doesn't even link effects to damage. But since we're making a movie project, appearance is everything. The original BSBC has inner beam cannons that fire forwards and often clip through the hull. This is unacceptable. Our new ship must avoid this.

2.) We need more guns on it. The new BSBC will be more to canon scale. The original canon scale puts the BSBC at 2,000km, but it's not big enough ingame to reflect this. The new scale puts this ship closer to mobile fortress scales. Since it will be larger, it needs more guns to justify this scale. We have strict poly limits in Sins, so our new guns must be extremely conservative. The Sonsora, seen in the center of the first shot, had 166 individual guns on it when it was revised. We can do better with this ship.

3.) It needs to play the part of the Royal Family's most flamboyant and imposing flagship. Only twelve such ships were created, and their firepower and defensive abilities were unmatched.

The Bloodstone Battlecruiser was foreseen to be the most difficult revision model of Retribution and one of the most if not the most difficult foreseeable ship to get correct in the entire project.

A new stratagem I have employed on some recent Anahn ships is likely to be useful in this one. Normally, I would struggle to figure out where to put any guns at all on such a hull. But I have developed a technique called Box Modeling, that allows me to make a box and put guns on it. Finally, 13 years later, I have developed a basic skill that should serve me well in this ship. You can see the fruits of such labor on the Vanarch.

The layering plated ribs serve as hardpoint locations rather well. The BSBC is likely to have a lot of these. It is large enough that its smallest guns would be dealing enormous damage to battleships ingame. It will have many such guns. All it needs is a place to put them.

Two weeks pass. Yep. I opened the max file, lost interest immediately, and didn't bother to document any further thoughts. Other than the video developer series, which is mostly filled with bitching and nothing team liquid would ever be interested in (who wants to watch bad people fail at modeling, anyways?)

So, I'll jump right to the juicy parts.

My stratagem for ribs was working out very well, but the ribs are very poly intensive, and the game has a very low poly limit on its converter. I need to make extra gutted turrets for this ship. Each plating section consists of a box that is then copy pasted a set distance from each other in, fused together, and either bridged or just moved to conform to the shape of the hull. Very basic, very amateur stuff, and for this it works.

The Flame Lance cannons, one of the deadliest royal weapons, are added. These are from the old mesh, significantly optimized. Their particles ingame need a massive overhaul I have been too depressed to get to.

The beam cannons are added. There's only going to be the three forward guns. Unlike the original, regrettably, I can't think of a way to justify forward guns without running into severe clipping problems. Therefore, this ship will have to engage in broadside in sins.

The near final version. I started running tight on polies, which is unfortunate.

The final version.

Recently I took up finishing the Kerr`Ussan, based on the 2007 Gahennas Carrier.

The original Gahennas model, a disgusting maya mesh.

The new variant, the Kerr`Ussan, a still hopelessly disgusting mess but at least a little less disgusting. I still need to fuss over the wings and inner areas a bit, so it isn't done, but it's reasonably close.

docvoc

United States5491 Posts

March 21 2013 20:22 GMT

There are a lot of poly's there for a game. Why not use skins to give the detail and not the actual models themselves? They are pretty, but high poly.
EDIT: stop calling everything disgusting, please. Obviously you put work into this, if you want to say that it needs more work or fleshing out, but calling everything disgusting is too harsh. Stop being so harsh on yourself dude.

IskatuMesk

Canada969 Posts

March 22 2013 03:48 GMT

They are pretty low poly for a game, really. The max sins converter supports is 50k, which doesn't really have an impact on performance. Since I can't do any kind of skining, I have to do what I can with detail, which isn't anywhere near what I wish I could do. Thus, disgusting, especially for 13 years experience. Being realistic is key to defining progress. I've made little progress since I began so many years ago.

-Kaiser-

Canada932 Posts

March 22 2013 10:21 GMT

Don't post anything on the internet that you aren't fucking proud of.

Ftr, for a hard-body model, it's looks higher poly than it really needs to be for a game in my opinion as well. Those cannons look like a stupid poly sink. Displacement and normal maps exist for a reason.

Looks cool though.

IskatuMesk

Canada969 Posts

March 22 2013 11:30 GMT

I think most of the guns on the bsbc are under 140 quads except for the beam cannons. Grand total it's about 24k quads/46k tris or something. Which is fine for a game. Most of my models for the Anahn are running between 20-50k tris and I have no performance problems of any kind. Couldn't care less about performance on low-end hardware; this is a private project.

I have nothing I am proud of, so that is one reason I don't post hardly anything. I hope the end product of all this work can be something I can be proud of, but the chances of someone mentally disabled like me being able to pull through on the tough shit like the UDK cinematics is incredibly unlikely.

I have no choice but to try, though.

/edit

Also, sins doesn't support displacement maps. I don't know how to make normal maps, and I likely never will. So I don't worry about those.

Recognizable

Netherlands1552 Posts

March 22 2013 12:40 GMT

Really cool, do you study this or is this a hobby?

IskatuMesk

Canada969 Posts

March 22 2013 12:44 GMT

I haven't studied anything, no. I dropped out in grade 11 to pursue writing and modding. That was a long time ago, now. Way back in my early brood war days. I consider this sort of thing more of a way of life. I don't desire to ever get monetarily involved with it, though, and I've turned down several industry offers so far.

-Kaiser-

Canada932 Posts

March 22 2013 15:00 GMT

On March 22 2013 20:30 IskatuMesk wrote:
I think most of the guns on the bsbc are under 140 quads except for the beam cannons. Grand total it's about 24k quads/46k tris or something. Which is fine for a game. Most of my models for the Anahn are running between 20-50k tris and I have no performance problems of any kind. Couldn't care less about performance on low-end hardware; this is a private project.

I have nothing I am proud of, so that is one reason I don't post hardly anything. I hope the end product of all this work can be something I can be proud of, but the chances of someone mentally disabled like me being able to pull through on the tough shit like the UDK cinematics is incredibly unlikely.

I have no choice but to try, though.

/edit

Also, sins doesn't support displacement maps. I don't know how to make normal maps, and I likely never will. So I don't worry about those.

You just bake it out from your high poly model. :/

Dude, you should make like a personal blog so that this isn't off topic, but you sound like you've got some pretty unhealthy mental problems. You need a better outlook on life, sir. You're a good modeller.

IskatuMesk

Canada969 Posts

March 22 2013 16:20 GMT

I have a lot of personal blogs. Everything I do is fairly personal, though. You can always dig through my older blogs if you're interested in the subject. These are more than likely going to touch into many of the subjects as they progress. This will be a long, and very difficult, project.

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